Jumped the Shark
George Will and David Brooks think the War in Iraq has jumped the shark. I always thought that phrase was odd -- it refers to the Happy Days episode where Fonzie jumped over a shark tank on his motorcycle, thereby indicating that the show was going downhill. I don't know about you but if it's about going downhill, then Happy Days did that when it was first pitched to ABC. But I digress. E.J. Dionne probably though the War jumped the shark when it was pitched by Bush to Rumsfeld, or was it Cheney to Bush, or Wolfowitz to Cheney? Whatever.
As to Dionne, in a response to my emailing friend I wrote this:
Dionne argues that we are fucked over in Iraq, that we can't win any longer, and I think that's a load of crap. In the last 6 or so weeks we've had the Fallujah uprising and Sadr's forces taking control of certain cities. But neither of these "factions" have popular support in Iraq, and the whole country is not imploding. In both cases the situations are under control and getting better daily. We've avoided the bloodshed we obviously could have inflicted in both cases, and have increasingly marginalized each foe. I understand the politics of how things appear to be, especially given the relentlessly negative coverage, and that's certainly a problem for Bush. But the coverage has been relentlessly negative all along. It was relentlessly negative during a 3 day sandstorm during the ride to Baghdad, for crying out loud. Remember the 2-3 week period when we were in a quagmire in Afghanistan? The major media have no clue -- not one -- not half a clue -- they don't even have a fucking clue quark to work with.
I do not believe that everything is peachy keen over in Iraq. It most certainly is not. But that's the point, isn't it? We'll flay ourselves forever over Abu Ghraib while rat bastards (apologies to all the rat bastards out there) like Al Quaeda pulls off murders like this. Meanwhile, we continue to fulfill Bush's promise to create a sovereign Iraq on June 30. We continue to build up Iraq's ability to maintain order, which it must do in order for the new country to survive. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, but for all of the carping you'd think we just had a cave-in. Not.
On the other hand, for the Churchillians out there, try this, via you know who.